Unfortunately it, Google+ still has FaceBook's "We can use the stuff you post in any way we see fit including selling it to advertisers." (Read the TOS). Mind you, they don't claim ownership like Tumblr does, so a thumbs in the middle there.

The silver linings so far are no fucking game requests or pokes. I can also put people I don't give a damn about but can't safely block without sad feelings in a circle of their own and ignore them.

I'd kill for there to be some sort of 'Public Circle' set-up where you can Join a Circle and it will automatically create that circle in your profile and add anyone else who joins that circle to it (I guess that's sort of how Facebook Groups work?). Though maybe that would defeat the purpose slightly, since potentially your employers or family members could see that you're in that circle and jump into it, too.

[edit]The people search is also sort of fucked up. I can search people that I know for a fact are on it, and it will tell me it can't find them, so I have to go to the profile of somebody who has that person in a circle and then go to my original target's profile and add them to a circle.

Unfortunately it, Google+ still has FaceBook's "We can use the stuff you post in any way we see fit including selling it to advertisers." (Read the TOS). Mind you, they don't claim ownership like Tumblr does, so a thumbs in the middle there.

Although there have been numerous blog postings along the lines of "OMG Google is stealing my stuff" (see last week's "OMG Dropbox is stealing my stuff" drama) but they usually miss out the preceding lines ToS which say that all copyright remains with the creators of the content. All then they require is permission to host your stuff and serve it up to people who want to see it (which is why you uploaded it there in the first place), with added permission to resize it if required and general do the other things you'd need from an image/video/file hosting site. At least with the dropbox business it seemed to come from from a genuinely incompetent rewriting of the ToS that had to be swiftly updated, the Google+ ToS business seems to be largely down to bloggers posting clickbait (and it works too).

There are problems and niggles that need addressing - Warren and Neil Gaiman have flagged up issues for folks with a large online, early-adopting fanbase, and they need to make sure they aren't too draconian on people using pseudonyms or not using their photo, etc. basically things that will hopefully addressed when or not long after it goes live - I just don't think this is one, bar a few tweaks to clarify the situation better.

Well i got invited over the weekend. And now i'm on. Here's my profile.

It does look good, but i have no real pressing need for it yet, as for many people i know, the power of Facebook is just too strong. But i think that i will find myself using it more and more over the coming months...

I discovered a nifty trick when a friend of mine did a circle specific post: If you click on 'limited' on that post, it'll show you everyone else who that post was shared with. So, for example, if you're having a hard time finding Whitechapel people, you could click on oddbill's SMID post, and hit 'Limited' and see who it went to. Unfortunately they limit it to only showing you 21 profiles, and it probably skews toward only showing people that are already in your contacts, but it's handy if you've only got a couple Whitechapelers and are looking for more.

It seems to me that, with as cautious as people are being about Google+ (what with all the "read the fine print" posts going around, as well they should be) that Facebook's greatest tactic in hangstringing any future opponents was to fuck up in all the ways they did - we found that out too late, as most of us signed on with Facebook early, and now we're suspicious of anything else that looks like it.

I sincerely doubt that was the plan from the start, but still. Ironic.